The book is a complete reprint of the fabled but rare Drawing Course  (“Cours de Dessin”)of Charles Bargue and Jean-Leon Gérôme, published in Paris in the 1860s and 1870s.  For most of the next half-century, this set of nearly 200 masterful lithographs was copied by art students worldwide before they attempted to draw from a live model.  This book will be valuable to a wide range of artists, students, art historians and collectors, even as it introduces them to the hitherto-neglected master, Charles Bargue.

The Drawing Course is separated into three sections, in an ascending order of difficulty.  The first section consists of lithographs by Bargue after casts of sculptures, mostly antique examples that present the structure of the human body with remarkable clarity and intelligence.  The second part contains the lithographs that Bargue made after master drawings by Renaissance and modern artists, and the third section almost 60 exemplary drawings of nude male models. 

Experienced artists will recognize the skill and insight with which Bargue solved problems of drawing from nature; they will want to copy these plates to sharpen their professional skills.  For art students, the Drawing Course is a practical introduction to realistic drawing based on the observation of nature, a course

blissfully free of the usual charts and schemata requiring memorization and often productive of stultification.  For art historians, the Drawing Course documents the longstanding tradition of accurate draftsmanship prized by the late nineteenth-century figure painters who stood at the convergence of classicism and realism.

This volume concludes with a biography of Charles Bargue and a preliminary catalogue of his paintings, accompanied by reproductions of works both located and lost.  Bargue started his career as a lithographer reproducing the drawings of commercial illustrators for a popular market in comic, sentimental and erotic subjects.  By working with Gérôme, and by preparing the plates for this Drawing Course, Bargue was transformed into a master painter, equipped with the skills to match his taste, talent and ideas.  He became a master of telling details and exquisite tonal harmonies.

Gerald M. Ackerman’s collaborator on this volume is Graydon Parrish, the figure painter well known for his widely reproduced allegory, Remorse, Despondence, and Acceptance of an Early Death(1997-1999, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts).

Hardback monograph” biography and catalogue raisonné of his works, over 180 colored illustrations, 600 b/w.  [The English edition of 1986 is out of print.] 

Available from ACR Édition Internationale, Paris, for 140 euros plus postage.

Soft-bound pocket book condensation of the biography of the larger monograph, without the catalogue raisonné; many illustrations in color.

Available in America from www.budplant.com for $29.95.

Available from ACR Édition International, Paris , for 18 Euros plus postage.

Large quarto, cloth bound. Over 70 monographs on American Realist painters who visited and painted the Near and Middle East. Cloth bound, richly illustrated in color.

Available in America from www.budplant.com for $125.00.

Available in English and in French from ACR Édition International, Paris , for 104 Euros plus postage.